Heinz protests food agencies’ ‘advice’
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Battle of Midway year ago, changed entire Pacific War
Victory won in hour saved continental U.S. from attack; fliers proved courage in greatest air-sea conflict
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer
U.S. Pacific Fleet HQ, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
One year ago today, in the space of less than an hour, the United States won the Battle of Midway and the entire outlook of the Pacific War was changed.
It was not possible at the time to assess completely the results of the battle. Today, well-informed military quarters believe it is no exaggeration to say that defeat might have meant the loss of the war.
The United States now appears ready to go on the offensive.
War’s biggest naval force
After the United States defeated a two-pronged naval sally in the Coral Sea in May 1942, with the loss to Japan of 16 ships, including the carrier Ryukaku, and possibly prevented an invasion of Australia, the Japs gathered the biggest naval force of the war (80 or more ships) for a thrust at Midway, tiny bastion northwest of Hawaii, and sent a smaller force toward the Aleutians.
That the major forces intended to carry on past Midway to Oahu and America’s principal naval base here seems certain now. Success of the enemy undertaking and the accompanying smash at the Aleutians would have put the continental United States in extreme danger of attack.
Catalina patrol planes sighted the Jap fleet during the day of June 3. A few hours later, four patrol bombers loosed their torpedoes and the fight was on.
Planes attacked Midway
Next morning, June 4, planes from the Jap striking force attacked Midway and were met by Marine fighters. At the same time, Marine dive bombers and torpedo planes and Army heavy and medium bombers attacked the Japs. They damaged about 10 ships and the enemy changed course.
Next Navy carrier-based dive bombers and torpedo planes struck. They severely damaged the carriers Kaga, Akagi and Sōryū, damaged two battleships and sank a destroyer. The land-based planes made daring and effective attacks but it was the Navy’s carrier-based planes which broke the back of the attack by knocking out three of the four Jap carriers.
It was this phase of the battle which in less than an hour changed the course of the war.
Carriers sunk or scuttled
It developed that the three damaged Jap carriers were wrecked. They sank or were scuttled as derelict. The Jap planes had no place to land and the enemy’s aerial striking arm was crippled. Three enemy battleships were damaged, one severely.
That afternoon, planes from the Hiryū found the carrier USS Yorktown and made an attack on her from which she never recovered, though it took a Jap submarine to finish her off later while she was in tow. Planes from the Yorktown and other carriers went after the Hiryū and knocked it off.
The Japs lost 20 ships sunk or damaged, 275-300 planes, and 4,800 men or more. The United States lost the Yorktown and the destroyer Hammann. With them died 92 officers and 215 men. The United States lost an unstated number of planes.
Greatest air-sea battle
There were many notable features about Midway. It was the greatest air-sea battle in history. There was no direct ship-to-ship contact except by submarines.
One notable feature was the courage shown by U.S. fliers. Another was the ending of the myth that Jap fliers would rather die than turn back rom an attack. Some of them did turn back, and they were members of Japan’s first team.
The Japs had said that U.S. fliers would not die to press home attacks, but they did. The Americans, many flying outmoded planes, threw themselves with complete disregard of their lives against the enemy force. They forced it to turn back, smashed it, routed it, kept after it until June 6 when the fleeing enemy got beyond their range.
Dives to his death
Cpl. Eugene T. Card of Oakland, California, told me how Capt. Richard Fleming of St. Paul, Minnesota, near exhaustion from two previous attacks, his arm bandaged and his dive bomber riddled and in flames, dived to within 300 feet of a Jap cruiser before he released his bomb. The bomb hit and exploded. The cruiser rocked and began to list.
Capt. Fleming, his job done, plunged into the sea just off the bow of the ship.
Maj. Lofton Henderson of Gary, Indiana, for whom Henderson Field on Guadalcanal was named, was last seen diving his crippled and burning plane into the smokestack of an enemy cruiser to deal it a blow.
Thirty members of VT-8 attacked a carrier. One lived through the fire that met them – Ens. G. H. Gay Jr. of Houston, Texas. He watched two enemy carriers sink, one of them hit by his own “Torpron Eight,” while he floated on a rubber life raft throughout the day and a night.
Marauders hit carrier
Four Army B-26 Marauder medium bombers were used for the first time as torpedo planes. They fought their way back through enemy fighter planes and gunfire to hit a carrier. Two came back.
A handful of Marine fighters, flying crates pronounced obsolete, fought off Jap bombers at Midway and shot down at least 43. The fighters went in against odds of 4–1 and figured their chances of getting back were less than 1–10.
Most of the Marines plunged into the water during the battle but many were rescued. They saved Midway from the first attack and the Japanese never had the chance to come back.
Attu wounded eager to fight Japanese again
Cheerful despite bayonet and bullet scars and frozen limbs
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When heat was on at Attu, ‘invincible’ Japs quit cold
Under heavy shelling and strafing, enemy warriors lost heads and ran
By Sherman Montrose, ACME Newspictures photographer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, North Africa – (by wireless)
Many things have happened since I left my gang of Flying Fortress friends last January. Often in the months that intervened I have watched them plow through the Tunisian skies, miles above, and wondered what they were up to and what they were thinking and how things were with them. Now I have visited them again briefly.
A few of them are gone forever, but not so many. Practically everybody has gone up one notch in the promotion scale. Some of them have been sent home to help train new groups. And a lot of them have completed their allotted number of missions and are through with combat flying for a while, and assigned to ground duties.
Many new faces show up
Nearly all of them wear medals. Distinguished Flying Crosses and Purple Hearts are galore. Some of them seem pretty tired, and those of the old original crews who haven’t got in their full number of missions are anxious to get it done and rest.
Some of my enlisted friends have commissions now. Most of the January beards have been shaved off, and shirtless suntans have replaced the heavy mackinaws the mechanics used to wear. Pet puppies have grown into big dogs.
There are many new faces. Replacements arrive to fill the gaps left by those who don’t return and those who finish their required missions and go on ground duty. Everybody knows more about his job than he used to. It’s routine now, both on the ground and in the air, and you sense a confidence that comes from doing a thing a long time.
Fliers earn respite
Shortly after the Tunisian campaign ended, the flying men were given a three-day holiday, the first of its kind since they arrived in North Africa. Some of them went to the nearest cities by jeep or truck for a little fling. Others took planes and went to big cities farther back. Many went to beaches to swim and laze. And a great many went to Tunisia – to see with their own eyes the havoc they had so carefully and perilously wrought all winter.
They found it an odd thing to be there on the ground looking at a place they’d never seen except from miles above and with the sky around them riddled with flak and swarming with fighters. They visited Bizerte, which they had wrecked, and Ferryville and Tunis, whose docks they had demolished in their numberless raids. They were pleased at what they saw. They found that in their precise work of destruction they had done a good job.
Old plane finally checks-in
The House of Jackson – the Fortress crew I have followed since before it left England – doesn’t exist anymore as a “family.” The passage of time has scattered and consumed it. Two of the original members are dead. Some have been promoted. Others have completed their goal in missions and are on ground duty. The remaining few have been assigned to other crews.
They are all veterans of veterans by now, and their old Fortress itself is no more. The old “Devils from Hell” that they brought all the way from America nearly a year ago went down over Palermo one bitter day, but only one of the original House of Jackson was still on her then.
The faithful old ship was on her 42nd mission when she died. She had been on so many raids they had almost run out of room to paint the little white bombs on her nose, each of which denote a mission. Her list of enemy victims ran high too.
I supposed the boys would feel sentimental about her going, but they didn’t seem to.
Fliers are legion now
There was a day when I knew every group of fliers on combat duty in North Africa. But not anymore. They have multiplied and grown fantastically. Today there are more than you could possibly know, even if you devoted all your time to it.
When I go about the airfields now, I feel old in Africa. Those few who carried the torch at first, and still remain, are a sort of grandfather generation among all the hordes that speckle the skies today. And that is well, for that is what we have been waiting for.
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The Pittsburgh Press (June 5, 1943)
INVASION MAPPED AT AFRICAN CONFERENCE
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By George Palmer, United Press staff writer
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